


She Lit a Fire

by marcaskane (noblydonedonnanoble)



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Office, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-03
Updated: 2015-04-03
Packaged: 2018-03-21 01:45:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3672876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noblydonedonnanoble/pseuds/marcaskane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marcus and Abby deal with the consequences of a drunken hook-up at an office party.</p>
            </blockquote>





	She Lit a Fire

**Author's Note:**

> This fic idea came from [this](http://marcuskane.tk/post/114106354650/au-scenarios-were-bad-at-dating-edition) AU list

                Both Marcus and Abby swore that nothing was going to change between them.

                They swore it when they bumped into each other in the dim hall leading from the restaurant to the washroom and some kissing… happened…

                (Abby wouldn’t be able to say afterward exactly _how_ the kissing happened. One moment they were standing with a respectful amount of distance between them, and the next he had her up against the wall.)

                And when they locked themselves into the washroom…

                And when she pulled his tie loose, when he yanked open her dress with an alarming veracity…

                Over and over again, they mumbled it into each other’s mouths, against each other’s necks as they kissed repeatedly, desperately: “This doesn’t change anything.” And to be fair, why should it? At the end of the day, it was just a rushed hook-up.

                (Certainly it doesn’t matter that Marcus couldn’t remember the last time he’d come so fast, or with such enthusiasm. Nor does it matter that without any prompting from Abby, he knelt down and brought her over the brink in a way that made her knees buckle.)

                “This meant nothing,” they agreed as they straightened themselves up. Abby fixed his collar and Marcus flattened out her dress and she let him even though they both knew it was just an excuse to touch her ass one last time.

                No. They wouldn’t let it change anything.

                But of course it does; it changes everything.

                When their eyes met in the middle of an all-office meeting, it used to bring about a warm, patient spark that led to a few too many shameless staring contests.

                (And more than one daydream on both of their parts, though neither would ever admit it.)

                Now it stirs a wave of anxiety that prompts them both to avert their gazes immediately, and to keep their eyes trained on the table until they’re all dismissed. They race out of the room and back to their respective offices almost before their coworkers are out of their seats.

                They used to be the last two to linger in the office afterhours, both of them wanting to get as much work done as possible. Now one of them—and although they do not plan it or coordinate in any way, they always seem to alternate from day to day—leaves early along with everyone else. Better to get work done at home, than to risk… something.

                Neither Abby nor Marcus can put their finger on what they’d be risking, any more than they can say what’s so scary about what happened between them.  Because it certainly shouldn’t be scary.

                About two months after The Incident, things between them have become only slightly less uncomfortable. They no longer flinch when they make eye contact, and they find themselves once again able to make a few moments of small talk if they are in the break room to fetch their lunches from the fridge at the same time.

                But they continue to dance around each other, to take the earliest opportunity to put an end to their interactions.

                So when Marcus returns to the office one Friday night around 9pm to retrieve something that he forgot, the sight of Abby’s lit office is almost enough to make him turn around and leave.

                He doesn’t, though. Nothing about Abby being there should prevent him from briefly popping into his own office. Even so, he treads carefully, not wanting to distract her as he walks past her open door.

                Without even meaning to, he allows himself a brief glance inside… and promptly freezes.

                Marcus quickly transitions from amusement to a soft, tender sort of feeling as he processes the fact that she is asleep on her desk. She’s snoring quietly, and her hair is down, covering half her face.

                Frankly, she looks more charming than he’s ever seen her and he doesn’t really want to look away.

                But he also can’t just… leave her there. He thinks back to the times that he’s fallen asleep at his desk, and remembers that more than once, it was Abby who woke him up, swatting at his shoulder so that he jolted awake to her indifferent, “It’s after 10 o’clock, thought you should go home.”

                Taking a few cautious steps into her office, Marcus takes a deep breath as he reaches out to shake Abby’s shoulder gently. Things have been so strange between them lately that he has absolutely no clue how she’ll react when she wakes up to the sight of him.

                “Abby,” he murmurs. “Abby, wake up.”

                She jolts awake and sits up before Marcus knows what’s happening, and he’s standing so close that she elbows him in the thigh with the sudden move.

                He grits his teeth and jumps back, groaning, “Damn, remind me not to wake you up next time.”

                “Sorry, I – Marcus?” She blinks at him, and her voice is groggy as she continues. “What… what time is it?”

                “About 9:30.”

                “You’re kidding.” Abby exhales loudly and rubs a hand over her face. “I think I’ve been asleep for nearly an hour.”

                “Maybe you should head out and get some rest,” Marcus suggests.

                Abby grimaces, glancing forlornly towards her computer. “You’re probably right, but I was hoping to finish up my monthly report before I left…” She turns back to look at him, and quite suddenly a thought seems to occur as her brow furrows. “Hang on. Why’d you come back to the office so late?”

                “Oh, I left a jump drive here that has some files that I wanted this weekend.”

                “You came all the way back to the office on a Friday night for a jump drive?”

                He shrugs, and comes close to pointing out that it’s not like he has anything else more interesting going on, but that thought makes his heart sink. Just because it’s true, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t sting a little bit. Just because Abby probably knows that it’s true, that doesn’t mean he wants to acknowledge it to her flat-out.

                In the stretch of silence, there is a shift in the energy in the room as they process their circumstances and seem to remember, almost simultaneously, that they should be treading on thin ice right now. Abby can no longer bear to look him in the eye and Marcus begins to shift from one foot to the other and after a moment he clears his throat and says, “Well, I guess I’ll go get that jump drive and then I’ll be on my way.”

                “Sounds good.”

                 Marcus retreats into his own office, feeling more than a little dejected as he plops down in his chair and begins to search through his desk. For a few moments, things between them felt easy… possibly even easier than it had been before the party where they screwed everything up. But then they just had to let it get awkward.

                She knocks on the door and now Marcus is the one who jolts up at the noise, spinning around to look at her in surprise.

                “Yeah?” He tries to sound casual but his voice comes out too high and he cringes inwardly.

                “I’m… I was just thinking…” For a moment, Abby tries to make eye contact with him, but she can’t hold it and she stares a spot on his chest instead as she stammers until: “Oh, never mind.”

                “No, hang on.” Marcus jumps to his feet and almost moves to stop her from leaving, but she pauses before he can even take a step. “What is it?”

                He almost expects her to just shrug it off and tell him to forget about it, but instead, she continues to hesitate in his doorway. Not saying anything, but not leaving, either.

                “Why did we let things get so weird between us?”

                Marcus’s throat goes dry and his mind races. “I don’t know.”

                “Neither do I,” Abby confesses. She then proceeds to do something that he never would have expected, given the circumstances: she brushes past him and perches on the edge of his desk, looking up at him with serious eyes. “But I want to figure out how we can fix it.”

                “Okay.” Yes, he would be very much in favor of that. He’d give anything so that they could stop avoiding one another. “How… how do you think we can do that?”

                “I don’t know.”

                Marcus can’t help smirking. “That presents a bit of a problem.”

                “Yeah, I know.” Abby smiles in response, her eyes crinkling at the edges. “It’s a plan in progress. I think, though… I mean, we agree that what… what happened between us was a mistake, right?”

                He hesitates because in all frankness, he doesn’t particularly want to agree that it was mistake. He can’t say for certain that it wasn’t a mistake, either, because all of the ensuing awkwardness makes it hard to believe that it was all right and good. But he doesn’t regret it, and he doesn’t think he can lie.

                “Well, you think it was a mistake, yeah?”

                Abby looks as though she’s about to speak, but pauses at the last minute. She looks entirely neutral as she finally asks, “Do you _not_ think it was a mistake?”

                “That’s not what I said,” Marcus protests immediately.

                “You didn’t not say it, either.”

                He heaves a loud sigh. “Abby…”

                She waits for him to continue. He doesn’t, and as the moments pass them by, Abby’s expression becomes softer.

                “I work such long hours that I can’t date anyone right now,” he finally blurts.

                “Still haven’t answered my question.”

                “Yes I have!” Marcus exclaims, with an intensity that startles Abby and leaves her standing mutely before him. He clears his throat before continuing, and when he opens his mouth again, his voice is at a near-whisper. “You know my answer. The least you could do is stop taunting me about it.”

                Abby frowns. “I’m not taunting you.”

                “Why else would you be pushing this?”

                “Because I don’t regret it either, Marcus! I just assumed that you did!”

                Marcus swallows anxiously. “Why on earth would you—”

                “It’s like you just said: you work too much to date anyone.”

                “So do you.” In fact, this was something that they had bonded over years earlier, when Abby first got her job at the company. Marcus and Abby, both with work as their sole focus. Neither of them could fathom why other people might _choose_ to let themselves get distracted by a relationship.

                She scoffs, shaking her head at him and rising up from his desk so that she can stand at her full height. “No, that’s not what it is at this point. I’ve been trying to date, but it feels pretty useless once you realize that you’re comparing every date to your commitment-phobic coworker and all of them are losing.”

                As much as the full remark warms his heart, one word stands out and he exclaims, “Commitment-phobic?”

                “Oh, do you not think that you’re afraid of commitment? Then why haven’t I heard you mention a significant other even once in the _five years_ that I’ve known you?”

                If Marcus were less exasperated, if he were more capable of keeping his emotions in check in stressful situations, he would not say what he says next: “Well shit, Abby, I couldn’t tell you for sure, but the fact that I’ve been in love with you for nearly two of those years might have in some way contributed.”

                Abby’s eyes widen, but that is the only external indication that his words have at all moved her. She turns on her heel and stalks over to the window, crossing her arms and looking out at the lit-up city as she mutters, “Very funny.”

                He’s tempted to follow her, but he doesn’t because what started off as a genial conversation has turned too intense too fast and he’s not sure how Abby would react to him trying to so much as put his hand on her arm. So he lingers on his own side of his desk, simply keeping his eyes on her.

                “I’m serious. That’s why I didn’t know what to say to you after… after what happened. When you feel strongly about someone, you can’t just hook up with them and then act like everything is the same as it was before. I thought I would be able to, but I was wrong.”

                She doesn’t say anything for what feels like an eternity. Marcus doesn’t dare open his mouth, for fear that he will step on her toes and try to speak at the exact moment when she’s finally ready.

                When Abby finally speaks, her back is still to him.

                “I was so… so ready to focus on my career after I lost Jake. I got a fresh start here and I was able to throw myself into work with everything I had… And yet when I did fall for someone, it had to be _you_ , of all people. I was so mad about it because I didn’t want a fling, but I knew that you didn’t want a relationship any more than I did. Only now you’re telling me that I tried to push down my feelings for you… even though you loved me?”

                Marcus closes his eyes and lets out a long, drawn-out breath. “I guess so.”

                He feels like he’s blown it. If he had tried to communicate his interest to her earlier, they wouldn’t have ended up in this mess. Besides which, she thinks he’s afraid of commitment—why on earth would she give him a chance?

                Eyes still closed, he hears her moving back towards him. Then she starts to laugh.

                When he snaps his eyes open she’s right in front of him again, and she’s giggling as she tells him, “We’re even more of a mess than I thought. We could have been dating for two years already.”

                “Does… does that mean you’d still like to start now?”

                Abby grins. “I wouldn’t mind giving it a go.”

                She rises to her tiptoes and kisses him before he can respond; but he grins against her mouth and she can read between the lines.


End file.
